Mitchell claims government’s Carnival visitor arrival data is skewed

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

For­mer tourism min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell has ac­cused the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture of mis­lead­ing the coun­try in her pre­sen­ta­tion of Car­ni­val sta­tis­tics, as fresh da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice and a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest out­lines a more de­tailed pic­ture of vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

He said, “In their haste to pat them­selves on the back and de­liv­er a pos­i­tive nar­ra­tive, the Min­is­ters of Trade and Tourism and Cul­ture have to­tal­ly mis­led the coun­try on the Car­ni­val sta­tis­tics.”

The is­sue stems from the dates vis­i­tor ar­rivals from Car­ni­val have been his­tor­i­cal­ly mea­sured. Mitchell ar­gues the count be­gins 19 days be­fore Ash Wednes­day. How­ev­er the gov­ern­ment fig­ures be­gan from Jan­u­ary 1st, which was 44 days be­fore Ash Wednes­day this year.

He said, “What we are deal­ing with here is not a de­bate about which Car­ni­val is more suc­cess­ful than the oth­er. It is about whether the coun­try is be­ing giv­en ac­cu­rate and hon­est da­ta to build up­on for the fu­ture.”

Mitchell point­ed to con­flict­ing fig­ures re­leased by of­fi­cials and agen­cies. He said Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed, sup­port­ed by line min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, re­port­ed on 25 Feb­ru­ary that 54,000 vis­i­tors came for Car­ni­val.

He added, “Then the Min­is­ter [Michelle] Ben­jamin claimed 37,000 vis­i­tors, and on an­oth­er oc­ca­sion again claimed 54,000 vis­i­tors came for Car­ni­val. Both claims were false and mis­lead­ing.”

Back­ground da­ta from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, ob­tained through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest by Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, shows that 48,491 peo­ple ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the 19 days lead­ing up to Ash Wednes­day 2026, from 30 Jan­u­ary to 17 Feb­ru­ary.

Air trav­el ac­count­ed for near­ly all ar­rivals, with 48,441 pas­sen­gers en­ter­ing by air.

Of the to­tal ar­rivals, 31,852 were clas­si­fied as bona fide vis­i­tors, 16,175 were re­turn­ing na­tion­als, 184 were re­turn­ing res­i­dents, and 280 were re­turn­ing res­i­dents liv­ing abroad.

Ar­rivals were heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which record­ed 30,511 bona fide vis­i­tors, com­pared with 1,315 at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion clas­si­fies “vis­i­tor ar­rival” sta­tus based on the pur­pose of vis­it de­clared by pas­sen­gers on their ar­rival and de­par­ture cards.

Cruise ship pas­sen­gers are treat­ed as tran­sit pas­sen­gers rather than land­ed vis­i­tors. While 5,826 peo­ple were on board ves­sels that docked at lo­cal ports, the fig­ure does not in­di­cate how many dis­em­barked.

Mitchell said of­fi­cial da­ta from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice presents a dif­fer­ent pic­ture from the fig­ures pub­licly shared.

He said the CSO re­port­ed a de­cline in vis­i­tor spend­ing and ar­rivals.

He said, “The CSO in­di­cat­ed that to­tal vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture was down from last year by close to $40 mil­lion, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10%. Car­ni­val vis­i­tor ar­rivals were al­so down by close to 10%, from 34,194 in 2025 to 31,358 in 2026.”

Mitchell called on stake­hold­ers to re­ly on con­sis­tent method­ol­o­gy for plan­ning.

He said, “The Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers should re­main grate­ful for the con­sis­ten­cy in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the method­ol­o­gy by the CSO. Fu­ture plan­ning de­pends on the ve­rac­i­ty of that da­ta.”

He warned against al­ter­ing bench­marks to present im­proved out­comes.

He said, “Hope­ful­ly, the Min­is­ters of Tourism and Cul­ture, as well as Tourism Trinidad, will learn that you can­not change the mea­sur­ing stick and then claim a bet­ter re­sult.”